How to be an activist:

It's been a while. And I've had a lot buzzing around in my head over the past week and a half...trying to figure out how to put it down into coherent thought pieces. Here goes.

In a nutshell, I flipped out a little. And my flipping out led me to a lot of questions. And some more convictions. This started when Sausage told me about the oil spill in the Gulf. First of all, it had happened two weeks prior to her mentioning it and I had no idea. This isn't the first time I've been behind on things outside my own life. I don't have television and even when we did I never bothered with the news. I don't, or rather didn't, ever check newspapers or online stories either. Didn't. I'm working on it, paying attention, finding some good internet sources. I'm not naive enough to think I'll find anything unbiased, but I'd like to get my news from the biases of different persuasions at least. Anyhow, I've got my eyes open now, world.

Second, the oil spill itself. I didn't have much of an opinion about the Exxon-Valdez spill, being 2 at the time. I've heard about it from my mom, who still refuses to buy her gas from Exxon. But reading about this spill...well, it horrified me. Cue flipping out. I went into some hysterics telling my husband about it. All I could...and can still...think was what are we doing here? Why do we do these things and not realize the consequences? We thunder onward with our eyes shut, it seems...taking and raping this planet. Perhaps this sounds dramatic. But isn't it? This is what is getting to me...that these thoughts are often considered outrageous or radical. Is it so radical? Is it not radical the things humans do, the things we get ourselves into? Is it not radical that thousands of gallons of oil were spilling out into the ocean unchecked? Knowing as we do what damage this causes, how was it allowed to happen? And further, how do we change it?

That's basically the question that's been ringing in my thoughts over and over through the last week and I'm not just talking oil spills. How do we change? How can we live in the world we've made this into and respect what it was before we were here? I don't have an answer. But I'm going to look for it. I'm going to try to do more than just my part. Because I no longer think that just my part will be enough. I don't know how to be an activist. But I'm going to learn.